A Dead Garden and a Bed of White Roses
by Comicbookfan
Summary: ..."Gather 'round children, come sit by the fire, and I will tell you the story of a love doomed from the start..." How can love grow with two so...insane?...Insane asylum AU. Psychoshipping. Written for Computerfreak101's challenge.


**A Dead Garden**

Summary: How can love grow with two who are so...far gone? Insane Asylum AU, Psychoshipping for Computerfreak101's contest.

Explanations: This is what came out of my first shonen-ai fic. The names are written the Japanese way, and I had to make up last names and first names: Mariku: Yami Malik, Bakura: Yami Bakura. I do not like it very much. But it is a first attempt at shonen-ai, and, frankly, at Romance.

This may seem a bit OOC, but it is AU, and it is how I believe they would act if they were over-medicated.

* * *

_Gather 'round children, come sit by the fire, and I will tell you a story, of a love doomed from the start._

* * *

Ishtaru Mariku would laugh.

He laughed a lot.

But the laughs were always empty, always devoid of something.

Joy, perhaps.

Sanity, also.

But he relished keeping the other inpatients up at night with his maniacal laughter.

* * *

Yami Bakura would cry.

He cried a lot. Over-dramatically.

He made his body wrack with sobs.

But the crying was devoid of something.

It was sadness, pehaps. Or maybe even sanity.

Because he never really had a reason to cry, if one didn't count where he was.

He just relished keeping the other patients up at night, wallowing in his shattered heart.

* * *

Yami Bakura and Ishtaru Mariku were not to be getting out of the mental hospital soon. Considering the medicated bliss they were always in. And, of course, the schizophrenia. The hallucinations. The sadism. The addictions to blood.

They had so much in common, did they not?

They both wore the same color straitjacket. They passed each other in the halls, in their respective wheelchairs, on the way to their therapy sessions. Sessions which never helped, because they were too far gone to even mingle with other patients without being closely supervised.

But then when they were both fifteen years old, with no hope of escape from such a place, with it's white walls and heavy medications, they were allowed to have visits with each other, unsupervised, because they were too heavily drugged to do anything, really, and it had to be against the law to not allow any human contact with someone like them whatsoever. And they were totally incapacitated.

Of course, they were checked on, every half hour or so. It was only a two hour 'visit'.

But there was one thing they were not incapacitated against.

Love.

* * *

The first time they met, the only things they could see was the face of the other. Colors swam around them, as they felt lightheaded. But the stoic Mariku could see the usually emphatic and eccentric Bakura with startling clarity.

Their first thoughts were: nothing at all.

They didn't care about the other. They barely noticed the other was there. Too stuck in their own little worlds. Their own little islands.

The next time they met each other, after it was proved they were no danger to the other, they still did nothing but stare. The third, fourth, fifth, sixth, up to twelfth passed the same way, until Bakura opened his mouth, saying in his growly, detatched way.

"Who the fuck are you?"

To which Mariku, with his own sandpapery, detatched voice, had replied: "Ishtaru Mariku."

Even though his name had not been asked, the other told him it anyway.

"Yami Bakura."

And that was the start of everything...wrong.

That was the start of a fruitful and profoundly disturbing...

Friendship?

* * *

**_Love cannot grow in a dead garden._**

Those were the words Mariku had written, the words in the diary that had gotten him sent to the stupid asylum in the first place. If if it were not for the asylum, he would have been sent to jail.

But he couldn't help but think things could be a bit different.

When he met Bakura.

Opposites don't always attract.

When he had talked to Bakura he had known that the boy was perfect for him. He could talk about things he would never talk about to anyone else, while they slipped in and out of consciousness.

Screams.

Blood.

Terror.

And whenever anybody came into the room, they would simply stare at the walls, at the woman or man, and snarl and threaten, but be unable to do anything at all, physically. They weren't coordinated enough.

Such a dismal existence.

But they had each other, and that counted.

In honesty, it was only a matter of time before it happened, and it did.

They fell in something-like-love.

Love...doomed from the start.

One day, they had been talking, as usual, with Mariku talking in his calm way (though he wasn't calm when he kept the others up at night with his voluntary laughter) and Bakura talking in his...not so calm ways.

And they had stood up.

In one magical moment, their insanity blended into the sanity of love.

It took them a few tries for their lips to meet. But they did in the end.

They didn't care that the other was of the same gender.

No. They didn't.

And it was, for a while, true love, in some sort of twisted way.

But things do not end up that way, not in a place such as what they called their home.

They were taken apart. One day, a nurse came across them kissing. Quite passionately. And bloodily too, with their teeth ripping at the others' lips.

They were not allowed to see each other again that day.

They were both seventeen.

And though it was usually only Bakura who did the crying, both of them did that day, because they loved the other so.

"No! No! Without him, I'll die!" Bakura had screamed, and it had not just been an act.

"Let me go back to him! Let me go back! We are in love!" Mariku had cried out.

* * *

After that, they cried and laughed in unison, and the racket kept all the other inpatients wide awake nights.

* * *

Bakura was the first to break. He was the more crazy, threatening, physical one of the two, while the other was more into psychological torture.

He had screamed: "I'll die! I'll die! I'LL KILL YOU!!! I'LL KILL YOU ALL!!!"

And he did. He died. Just to spite them, the others supposed. He had a heart attack, actually, and his eyes had rolled into the back of his head and he had screamed.

Always had to have a theatrical death.

Nobody told Mariku until two weeks after, when he had heard two nurses speaking about the not so tragic death of an 'unloved' boy.

But he hadn't been!

Mariku had laughed as hard as he could to the point of screaming.

He had a heart attack too, in the end, but he died much slower.

The nurses and doctors supposed it was from a broken heart, or some shit like that.

He wanted to be with him. With Bakura.

He had watched their conversations in his mind's eye.

**_'The first person I killed? Don't remember. Do the last though. Some kid. I don't even know his name. But he looked a lot like you Mariku. A lot like you, only softer.'_**

**_'Hm. The first person I killed was a little girl. How she screamed! Screamed and screamed! I loved it. She had the oddest colored hair...your color. She was with a kid who looked lot like her. But he ran. I got him later, though. Then I killed him. Real slow. He looked sort of like you, I think.'_**

**_'Yeah. You know, Mariku, I think I love you.'_**

**_'Me too.'_**

**_After a couple of tries, their lips met._**

And he had yearned to be reunited with the one he needed and pined for so, even if it had to be in hell.

* * *

_Remember, children, as Mariku once said, love does not grow in a dead garden. No. It does not grow in a bed of white roses either, among a sterilised, stifling smell. But maybe, just maybe, it can grow after death. _

_Now go to sleep._


End file.
